Rating: 

Summary: Bad organization undermines usefulness.

The book starts off with a good summary of syntax, data types and the like. This is very useful, and PHP being what it is to developers familiar with Perl or C, you could get a good start on the language just from the first 34 pages.

The remaining pages (a 132 page book), however, are a disappointment. They comprise a function reference, with the functions organized alphabetically. I really believe this organization to be ill-conceived. To me, the book would have been far, far more useful -- perhaps 2 or 3 "owls" more -- if the functions were organized according to categories: math functions, database functions, string functions, and so forth.

One can only hope the 3rd edition will correct this. As it stands, I'm sorry to say I don't recommend buying it.